Technik und Medizin

social setting and medical politics of late eighteenth-century Manchester and its Infirmary. With the late publication of his text, argues Pickstone, Percival tried to defend a, by then threatened, civico-medical virtue ethic, in the tradition of Bishop Joseph Butler. Robert Baker finally complements this with a detailed analysis of Percival's code as such. Arguing in particular against Ivan Waddington's interpretation that Percival intended primarily to preserve intra-professional hierarchies and divisions of labour by insisting on medical etiquette (Med. Hist., 1975, 19: 36-5 1), Baker produces evidence from the text that Medical ethics basically represented a social contract between a profession and the public. It was obviously inspired by the Reverend Thomas Gisbome's concept of an "office", as developed in his Enquiry into the duties ofmen in the higher and middle classes of society (1794). As Gisbome saw it, those who enjoyed the privileges of a particular "office" or station in society, such as the magistrate, the lawyer, and the physician, had tacitly contracted to fulfill carefully their specific duties. An important new element of Percival's ethics was, according to Baker, the shift from individual to collective decision-making, necessitated by the structures of the hospital. This collection of very original essays has clearly set the standard for future research on the history of medical ethics. The announced second volume on the codes and practice of the nineteenth century will thus be read with high expectations.